Friday, July 31, 2009

Today SMI announced the new RED250 which, as the name suggests, has an impressive 250Hz sampling rate. It has an accuracy of 0.5 degrees or below (typ.), less than 10 ms. latency and operates within 60-80 cm head distance. The track-box is 40x40 cm at 70cm distance and will recover tracking faster than the previous model. No details on pricing yet but top of the line performance never comes cheap. Get the flyer as pdf.

"In the course of my work I have developed several gaze visualizations for facilitating eye tracking studies in (static) three-dimensional virtual environments. In order to evaluate the potential utility of these techniques, I am conducting an online survey with eye tracking researchers and professionals. I would like to invite you to this survey as I think that your answers are highly valuable for this investigation. The survey should take less than 10 minutes of your time! Your answers will be stored anonymously. You can access the survey under the following link: http://gamescience.bth.se/survey/index.php?sid=27319=en "

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Remember the TeleGaze robot developed by Hemin Omer which I wrote about last September? Today there is a new video available showing an updated interface which appears to be somewhat improved, no further information is available.Update: The new version includes an automatic "person-following" mode which can be turned on or off through the interface. See video below

Thies Pfeiffer (blog) working in the A.I group at the Faculty of technology, Bielefeld University in Germany have presented some interesting research on 3D gaze interaction in virtual environments. As the video demonstrates they have achieved high accuracy for gaze based pointing and selection. This opens up for a wide range of interesting man-machine interaction where digital avatars may mimic natural human behavior. Impressive.

Monday, July 13, 2009

"Two years ago computer security expert Bill Anderson read about scientific research on how the human eye moves as it reads and processes text and images. 'This obscure characteristic... suddenly struck me as (a solution to) a security problem,' says Anderson. With the help of a couple of software developers, Anderson developed a software program called Chameleon that tracks a viewer's gaze patterns and only allows an authorized user to read text on the screen, while everyone else sees gibberish. Chameleon uses gaze-tracking software and camera equipment to track an authorized reader's eyes to show only that one person the correct text. After a 15-second calibration period in which the software learns the viewer's gaze patterns, anyone looking over that user's shoulder sees dummy text that randomly and constantly changes. To tap the broader consumer market, Anderson built a more consumer-friendly version called PrivateEye, which can work with a simple Webcam to blur a user's monitor when he or she turns away. It also detects other faces in the background, and a small video screen pops up to alert the user that someone is looking at the screen. 'There have been inventions in the space of gaze-tracking. There have been inventions in the space of security,' says Anderson. 'But nobody has put the two ideas together, as far as we know.'" (source)